Cold Cereal

by Adam Rex

  There was a cabinet of skulls. Some were grotesque, with fierce curves of tooth and bone, but many, too many, were to all appearances human. Scott wondered what pointed ears or elegant, almond eyes might once have adorned these. One set of skulls, seven in all, were as small as dice.

  Scott crossed the room like a sleepwalker, toward the skulls and heads, to stand under the unicorn. He looked up at the unicorn’s head and neck jutting out from that rosewood plaque. There was a brass plate set into the plaque, just beneath the soft fur of the throat, and an inscription. The inscription read MIDWEST REGIONAL SALESPERSON OF THE YEAR.

  Scott blinked and read the plate again. Then he stepped over to the massive head of the giant, who had been the Roosevelt High School District Swim Champ of 1963, apparently. The eagle was either World’s Greatest Dad or else his head had been a Father’s Day gift—it wasn’t clear to Scott. Even less clear was why a row of beheaded toad-boys might be considered appropriate awards for perfect attendance, or even what sort of place you’d have to attend to be given something like that.

  Haskoll sniffed behind him.

  Suddenly it all came clear to Scott as he felt a headache coming on. He forced a smile and turned.

  “Nice plaques. Papa sure has won a lot of awards. I really should be getting home.”

  “They are nice, aren’t they,” said Haskoll, stepping forward. “I think that one’s my favorite,” he added, indicating the unicorn. “Of course, not everyone can see what’s so great about them. But you and I can.”

  So Haskoll was special. Special in the way Scott was special, and Haskoll knew it. He’d probably seen Mick in the park….

  “Sure. Yeah, I have a soccer trophy at home myself. Well, not really a trophy, more like a ribbon for participation.”

  … and Haskoll did not strike him as being one of the good guys. Scott would deny everything and get out of there as quickly as possible. It was a classic kid strategy, and he couldn’t think of a better one offhand.

  “You asked about cold iron,” Haskoll intoned. “Look over here.”

  “That’s okay, I really need to—”

  “I insist.” Haskoll took Scott by the arm to a glass cabinet against the sidewall. Inside were three pockmarked lumps of dark metal on wooden stands. Haskoll opened the cabinet and removed the smallest piece. “A real meteor. Nickel-iron. You can hold it.”

  Scott held it. A faint trill traveled through his hand and up his arm. He didn’t like it.

  “Feels weird, right?” asked Haskoll, his face close, his breath hot.

  Scott shrugged. “Feels like a rock. Heavy.”

  “We call them coldstones. Papa and me. Watch this.”

  He produced the bag of animal droppings and held them near the metal. Scott watched, but not much seemed to be happening.

  “These droppings are nothing,” said Haskoll. “They’re rabbit turds. Now watch this.” He reeled Scott back to the cabinet of skulls and tapped the coldstone against the glass. At this it sparked with purple light and gave off angry flashes.

  “Weird, huh?”

  “I don’t see anything,” Scott lied.

  Haskoll turned to face Scott fully. He stared (with the joyless smile of a boy who likes pulling the wings off things) and said nothing. Then a phone rang. Haskoll stared, and it rang again.

  “Is that … is that your phone? Are you going to—”

  “It’s just Papa, calling to tell me that our smallest coldstone has been in his left waist pocket all along.”

  “Um … well, shouldn’t you—”

  “He’s an idiot, Papa. A complete tool. I do all the hunting. All of it. Papa just shoots where I point, because he likes to shoot things.”

  The phone rang a seventh time, and an eighth, and stopped.

  “That backpack of yours looks about ten pounds lighter. Why don’t you call for your little friend, and we’ll all talk about this rabbit-man that Goodco misplaced.”

  Scott breathed. “Okay. Can I see that coldstone again?”

  “Sure.”

  Scott took it and threw it as hard as he could through the cabinet glass. Then he ran back for the front door, screaming.

  “MIIIIIIIIIIICK!”

  He tore through the narrow hall, slamming doors behind him, and slid to a stop on the marble floor of the foyer just as Mick emerged from the bathroom.

  “Trouble, lad?” the elf asked before Scott scooped him up.

  “Shh!”

  Scott didn’t suppose he could outrun Haskoll to the main gate, so he pulled the front door open wide and hid the two of them behind it. He pressed his back against the inside wall and counted to give his mind some focus. He’d only counted to two before hearing the sound of a door, and the patter of feet running past, and then silence. At fifteen, Scott and Mick came around the side for a peek.

  “Wore out your welcome fast, did yeh?” whispered the elf.

  “Not even. I think we were about to get invited to stay permanently.”

  They squinted out into the sunshine. There was no sign of Haskoll.

  “I woulda gotten us free,” said Mick. “I always escape, eventually.”

  “Remind me to tell you about the trophy room.”

  Outside, birds were singing. Wind ruffled the tops of trees.

  “We’re going to have to run for it, aren’t we?”

  “On three?”

  On three they ran. Scott, for his part, thought he’d never run like this before. He was a pinwheel of limbs. He remembered the president’s Physical Fitness Test at school and how he’d only earned a lousy Participant ribbon for that, too. If only the president could see him now—he just needed to be chased is all.

  Mick was faster than you’d expect for someone with no real legs to speak of. He skidded right between the bars of the gate and stopped to look back.

  “Mind your house, lad! He’s behind you!”

  Scott made for the center of the gate where the double doors met—it was especially thick with curlicued iron that would be good for climbing—but found that it had not quite latched. Luck o’ the Irish, or whatever it was he had for being part changeling. He slipped through the gate and shut it firmly behind him, and then Haskoll was there. The gate shuddered as the man slapped against it and glared, grinning, his fists clutching the ironwork, his face straining against the bars. Scott and Mick ran off down the hill before he had a chance to recover, or work the keypad.

  “It’s been really fantastic spending time with you, Scotty!” he called after them. “I hope you’ll both come back and visit!”

  CHAPTER 14

  Mr. Wilson was sleeping more and more lately, and hard to wake. It was like his bed exerted a lunar gravity, and for days he shuffled and sighed through rooms and conversations as though wading against its tidal pull. So that night it was a relief to find him once again his usual self, talking and joking at dinner. In fact, he was even more his usual self than he usually was, as though trying to make up for the past week. He seemed to have full use of the alphabet anyway, so Emily asked him about her eardrops. She’d been putting the same pink goop into her ears for years.

  “I’m almost out,” she told him. “I don’t have to see the doctor, do I? You can just get more at the pharmacy?” Neither sibling was fond of their doctor. The mere mention of her gave Erno a chill.

  She was the staff physician at Goodco, and Erno and Emily could see her for free, so they’d never seen anyone else. Unless you counted the school nurse. And it was hard to count the school nurse, whose solution for everything was to have you lie down behind a curtain while she called your parents.

  “You won’t have to go to the doctor anymore,” Mr. Wilson answered with a sudden plunge in disposition. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “But the eardrops—”

  “Forget about the eardrops,” he said abruptly, quieter. “You don’t need them anymore.” He rose from the table and moved to clear his plate.

  “Just like that?” said Erno. “And she won’t ge
t dizzy?”

  Mr. Wilson turned. His hands went up, palms out, like a mime trapped in a box. Just another invisible obstacle the kids couldn’t see. In a way, he was trapped in a box—a box that diminished in livable space every day, every second, but so slowly that it had been impossible to react. What had once looked like the world now seemed like a coffin. But the kids didn’t understand this. They couldn’t see the great dark cloud in his mind. “She won’t get dizzy. Don’t worry,” he told them, and began loading the dishwasher.

  “It’s okay. I’m okay,” Emily said quickly. “My ears don’t even hurt or anything. I can’t even remember the last time they hurt.”

  “There. See?” Mr. Wilson said. “Trust your sister. She’s the smart one.”

  Bang, the comment landed like a firecracker on the dining room table. Erno floundered in the terrible silence that followed, though Mr. Wilson went on busing the table as though he’d said nothing out of the ordinary. Emily shook her head at Erno, a ridiculous gesture.

  He pushed back his chair and left the room. Emily followed.

  “I don’t know why he said that,” she told him, stumbling up the stairs in pursuit.

  “Sure you do.”

  “It’s not true. We both get straight As.”

  “Oh, please.” Erno stopped so abruptly that Emily ran into him. “You only get As because there aren’t four extra letters at the beginning of the alphabet. Mr. Wilson doesn’t care about grades. He only cares about the games.”

  “You’ve solved lots of them first. There was that one with the matchsticks … and the one with the algebra problems—”

  “Right,” Erno said, “like I really could have beaten you at math problems? I know you let me win one game every year for my birthday.”

  Emily tried to look indignant, but it was obviously true.

  “That’s obviously not true,” she said. She was getting jittery, and her eyes were rimmed with tears.

  “It is,” Erno replied. “I know it is. Every year I win one game in November, and that’s it. Hey, I guess that means I was going to win this one too.”

  He was upsetting her. She was looking stiff and a little spastic, and Erno knew what usually followed that. He instinctively glanced about to make sure she wasn’t too near the top of the stairs, or anything on which she might hit her head if she fell. “Okay,” he said, “calm down.”

  Emily said nothing, just swayed in the hallway, then flinched. A framed picture of the kids’ trip to Menlo Park dropped suddenly from the wall and cracked. Emily seemed to gag, then cough, and stared cross-eyed at the small pink butterfly she had apparently just produced from her mouth. It rose off her tongue, propelled by the hot puff of her cough, and flitted over the banister to the floor below.

  Erno followed its flight, so he missed it when her eyelids fluttered like pink butterflies and her doll-body tumbled to the floor.

  “You made a butterfly,” Erno said, scarcely a moment after her eyes reopened. “Out of your mouth. It flew downstairs, and I lost it.”

  “Can you help me up?”

  Erno took her hand and helped her to her room, where they both sat down on the bed.

  “It must have flown in when we weren’t looking,” said Emily, “and then I coughed it back out.”

  “I guess.” Erno kicked his heels against the box spring. “Emily? Instead of letting me win, why don’t we just work on it together? I’m tired of competing against you. You’re smarter. I’m not mad at Mr. Wilson or anything. I just don’t want to do it anymore.”

  Emily stared for a moment. “Erno and Emily,” she finally said.

  Erno blinked. “Yeah … that’s what I’m saying: Erno and Emily, the unbeatable team. Brains and brawn. Well, not brawn exactly, but I promise I’ll start lifting weights—”

  “No,” said Emily. “That’s the solution so far. To the game. E, R, the word no, the word and, and the letters M-L-E.”

  “M-L-E,” Erno repeated. “Emily. I swear I would have figured that out. Well, wait—is that it? Is that the whole answer?”

  “No. I think it’s just a salutation—like it’s the beginning of a letter. At the moment Dad’s avoiding commas. Erno?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I had a dream just now,” Emily answered, shivering. “When I was on the floor. Something terrible is going to happen.”

  “What? Why? What was the dream?”

  Emily looked at him, and her face was scared but vague, as though she wasn’t sure of herself.

  “I … it was just an empty room. Empty except for a chair in the middle. As plain a chair as you can think of, in an empty room.”

  “Okay.”

  “And, I thought, That’s strange, because I knew in some way that I was dreaming and that an empty room with a chair was a strange thing to dream about.”

  Her body shook again.

  “It was actually boring, you know? I was bored just looking at that chair. But dreams are never boring.”

  Erno huffed. “Sure they are. A few nights ago I had a dream I was walking around the school at night. Nothing happened; I just walked around. That’s pretty boring.”

  “But it wasn’t boring at the time,” said Emily. “Right? It only seems boring now.”

  Erno frowned, trying to remember. “I guess so. That’s weird.”

  “It’s not weird. Being bored means whatever you’re doing isn’t holding your interest. Your attention wanders. But when you’re dreaming, the dream is the only thing you’re thinking about. Your mind can’t wander ’cause the dream will just wander along with it. That’s what I think, anyway.”

  “Go back to your dream,” said Erno.

  “Okay. I watched the room for a while, waiting for something to happen, but it didn’t change for the longest time. Then, suddenly, I walked into the room.”

  Erno frowned. “Weren’t you already in the room?”

  “No. I was just watching it. And then I watched myself walk into the room. It was me, or … someone who looked just like me. And then the girl that looked just like me sat in the chair, facing me, and said … and said, very calmly,

  ‘Something terrible is going to happen.’

  “And then I woke up.”

  Erno felt like mentioning that this wasn’t really that scary a dream, but after considering it a moment, he conceded that yes, actually, it was kind of scary.

  “I think it’s true,” Emily said. “I think something terrible is going to happen.”

  “You mean you think this dream was some kind of … fortune-telling? A premonition?”

  Emily shook her head and got up to kick off her shoes. As her feet slid into her slippers, she said, “No. No, I don’t believe in that sort of thing.”

  “But you said—”

  “I don’t think I was telling the future or anything. It sounds crazy, I’m sure, and stupid, but I think the dream was my subconscious mind trying to tell my conscious mind something it already knows. I don’t think it was really a dream at all. I already know what’s going to happen, and it’s so terrifying, I’m too afraid to even think about it.”

  Erno thought he ought to have something comforting to say about this, but, in all honesty, the thought of some great terror barreling down on them sounded about right. It sounded consistent. Every encouraging word that came to mind seemed falsely sweet and ugly, like supermarket birthday cake. It would be their birthday, he remembered, in a handful of hours. Happy Birthday to them.

  “Please don’t tell Dad I fell,” said Emily. “I don’t want to go see the doctor.”

  “Yeah. She’s creepy.”

  “I don’t even know her name,” said Emily. “I asked her once, and she said Doctor.”

  Erno huffed. “Well, maybe you won’t have to see her for a while. Maybe neither one of us will.”

  “I hope so.”

  Erno hoped so, too, because he didn’t know that the doctor would be making a house call the next day.

  There were two birthday cards stuck to the refrig
erator with fruit-shaped magnets. They’d arrived from Goodco a week ago. They were, in fact, identical to the birthday cards Goodco had sent the year before, and the year before that. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO A MEMBER OF THE GOODCO FAMILY! read the front, which also featured cartoon art of Clover, Kookie, Agent SuperCar, the Snox Rabbit, and Chip, Sparkle, and Pip. The inside said MAY YOU ALWAYS STAY CRISPY IN MILK!, which Erno assumed was some kind of metaphor. That morning the siblings found that the words Happy Birthday had been cut out from each card with a knife. Mr. Wilson must have done it during the night, because he hadn’t yet emerged from his bedroom upstairs.

  When he still hadn’t appeared for lunch, Erno and Emily set out to pick up their birthday cake alone. And on the way to the supermarket, they saw that Happy had been scribbled off a street sign on Happy Valley Avenue. They noticed a bedsheet half covering the billboard for the Happy Hunter Steakhouse. A bald man in a tie and shirtsleeves screamed at his employees outside a mattress store on Logres Avenue, demanding to know “Who would do this,” and “What kind of person thinks this is funny” and “How will people know that Mattress King is having a Birthday Blowout Bash if some joker’s painted a black rectangle over the word Birthday.”

  The huge neon sign at Happy Jack’s Discount Furniture had a broken Happy, a rock still lodged conspicuously between the two p’s.

  Emily looked at Erno, stunned. “I can’t believe Dad vandalized a sign,” she said.

  At the supermarket, the bakery counter lady opened the white box so the twins could inspect their cake, which read HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERNANDO EMILE. They said it was fine and paid.

  “I’ve decided what I want for my birthday,” said Emily on the way back. “I want you to promise never to hate me.” She was watching him out of the corner of her eye, as if he might disappoint her, as if he might refuse.

  He didn’t hate her, of course, and he thought perhaps that could be his thing. Emily’s thing could be about being the smartest, and Erno’s thing could be not hating her for it.